Cat Ellington
Cat Ellington (born Kimberly Monique Hart to parents Linda Marie Hart and Ezell Ellington-Jenkins on November 28, 1970) is an American songwriter, casting director, poet, and author from Chicago, IL. She is best known for her work as the executive casting director on the feature film, Dual Mania, as well as for her authoring and co-authoring several efforts in literature, including the ''Reviews by Cat Ellington Complete Anthology book series, and ''The Making of Dual Mania: Filmmaking Chicago Style, ''the latter a collaborative effort with fellow writer and theater critic B.J. Patterson, and filmmaker Joseph Strickland, to whom Ellington is married. '''Early Life & Education The youngest of two children, Ellington grew up on Chicago's South Side with her mother and her older brother, RaVan Hart. And over a period of several years, the small clan, originally from the Kenwood/Hyde Park Historic District, would relocate to other legendary South Side, Chicago neighborhoods, including Jackson Park, Bronzeville, Washington Park (where both Ellington and her big brother would attend William W. Carter School and Edmund Burke Elementary School over the stretch of a few years), and Douglas, where the family would come to reside in the Harold L. Ickes Homes, a Chicago Housing Authority development sprawled along the so-called "low end" of the South State Street corridor, after inflation forced them from their Washington Park habitation in 1979. Products of the Chicago Public Schools system, both Cat Ellington and her brother attended John C. Haines Elementary School in the South Side Chinatown community from 1979 to 1983 before they once again uprooted and moved to another location quite foreign to their own: the state of Minnesota. With the acceptance of an out-of-state job offer, Linda, herself an alumna of Chicago's Dunbar Vocational High School, would pack up her family and head north to the baited down town of Saint Paul. Cat would resume completing her 8th grade credits as a student at Saint Paul's Ramsey Junior High School before transferring to Highland Park High School to begin her 9th grade year in 1984. Majoring in her passions of music and creative writing, Ellington would remain a student at Highland until her graduation year of 1988. Professional Career After returning to her native Chicago in the summer of 1991, Cat Ellington would support herself by working odd and end jobs until the winter of 1992, when she would then find stable employment with a downtown Chicago marketing firm. It was there that she met and befriended a fellow creative artist named Joseph Strickland, who, incidentally, just so happened to be putting the finishing touches on the second draft to an original screenplay that she would soon learn was titled "Dual Mania." ''With time, Ellington and Strickland's friendship would blossom and continue to grow with one learning more about the other, and vice versa. But in early 1993, the two would part ways after Cat left the firm for a higher-paying position elsewhere. It wouldn't be until the summer of 1993 that the pair would reunite and embark on both a romantic and professional journey. In the coming months, Ellington would read the script to ''"Dual Mania" ''several times, falling in love with the psychological thriller and immediately letting Strickland know that she "wanted in." The couple would soon put their creative heads together - his as a writer, producer and director; hers as a songwriter (she would contribute original songs to the motion picture soundtrack) and as a casting director (hired by Strickland after he realized her impressive and natural gift for picking the perfect talent to portray fictional characters) - and delve into the creative duties of bringing the magnificent screenplay to life on the silver screen. '''Personal Life' Cat Ellington has been married to Joseph Strickland since 1994. They have three children and a pet Pomeranian named Aspen. Quotes ' Category:Templates/Infobox Category:Images Category:Videos Category:Templates/Quote